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Lamar Alexander puts leadership life behind him

Part of his reasoning was that he wouldn’t be forced to toe the party line. |
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“There’s a little bit of groupthink that can take place,” said fellow Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, Alexander’s close friend, referring to Senate leadership. “I’ve always seen Lamar as one who always expresses his opinion — but I think when you’re leading a group of senators and it’s along a party line, that could be a little stifling.”

Alexander dropped by Corker’s office Monday evening to deliver the news, though Corker sensed something was on the senior senator’s mind for about a week.

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“I was tremendously energized when I woke up this morning and knew what Lamar was going to do at 10:15 a.m.,” Corker said.

At that time, Alexander gathered more than a dozen of his Republican colleagues to deliver his speech on the floor with his close friend of 40 years sitting nearby — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the chief architect of the Republican’s hardball strategy that Alexander seems to be abandoning.

“I’m a very Republican Republican,” he said, adding that his home district in Tennessee has not elected a Democrat to Congress since the time Abraham Lincoln was president. But he emphasized that being “independent” was part of his mantra, a path he said he’ll blaze outside leadership.

“I think those who believe that the debates today in our Senate are more fractious than debates in our political history have forgotten what Adams and Jefferson said of one another, and they’ve forgotten that Vice President Burr killed former Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton,” he said.

McConnell, who got word of Alexander’s decision in a private meeting Monday, insisted on the floor that “this is not a eulogy that we’re about to engage in, but really I think I have a great sense of relief” that he will continue to serve in the Senate and run for reelection.

The news of Alexander’s decision didn’t reach most of the 47 other Republicans until their BlackBerrys buzzed Tuesday morning with a letter from Alexander announcing his decision to step aside, saying he intends to be “more, not less, in the thick of resolving serious issues.”

He later told reporters: “I noticed two of the three Senate office buildings are named for very well-respected senators — Sen. [Philip] Hart and Sen. [Richard] Russell — who were never elected to leadership by their party.”

At a Monday evening vote, Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) was mingling with Alexander but got no hint that the senator was sitting on a bombshell that would change the GOP’s well-established pecking order.

But Boozman acknowledged the “tension” between trying to deliver results for voters back home and balancing national party interests.

“I think he genuinely wants to step down and pursue some things he feels are very important and feels frustrated like the rest of us that we’re not making more headway than we are,” he said Tuesday.

Other rank-and-file senators agreed, including some — like Sen. Mike Johanns of Nebraska — who have previously expressed interest in serving in the leadership.

“The more I think about it, the more I realize you do give up your independence to some significant degree,” Johanns said before a party lunch Tuesday. “You just have to. You can’t have a conference leadership of five different views of the world.”

Now, Alexander said, he wants to find bipartisan solutions for problems like nuclear waste disposal and controlling the cost of mandatory health care spending in order to fix the country’s fiscal mess.

“When he says he’s liberated, I kind of understand what he means,” Cornyn told POLITICO. “He can represent the interests of his state and do what he thinks is right without having to worry about the responsibilities of being the leader of the team.”

While the news came as a surprise Tuesday to Cornyn and his colleagues, Alexander said he’s “been thinking about it for a long time.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Sen. John Boozman's state. He is from Arkansas.

Me thinks that the Republican hard-liner's are about to get a very nasty surprise. When someone of Lamar Alexander's stature and credibility steps down to work toward a broad-based set of objectives and goal's for the betterment of his State and his country, and the current crop of Republican leadership candidate's publicly admire him for it, well, folk's, I do believe that the Republican's have seen the inevitability of their position. Hard-core right-wing Republicanism ( "Better dead than Red" ) is now being seen for what it really is, namely political terrorism, and has no place in a country that has a core value of negotiated compromise for the betterment of all concerned. That Alexander publicly declared his position to his colleagues, even before he went public, tells me that he is, frankly, fed up with the politicla hoopla and absolute bullpoop that Capitol Hill has turned into.

That Alexander has stated that he is more concerned with representing his State also tells me that he is getting word from his consituent's, as are the rest of his colleagues' if they will listen, that the voters are sick and tired of the political games being played out in Washington, but are being felt in reality, back in voter's district's. Alexander has a huge advantage in reading these signals as he ran for the Office of the President and saw 1st hand the impact that Capitol Hill antics have on voter's. His clearly stated declaration of running again shows he's not going to miss the signals and get caught with his shorts down around his ankle's. If any of Alexander's colleague's are thinking of running for re-election, one would think, then they had better start learning the signals as he has. That's smart politics.

Lamar Alexander has long been too reasonable for the new extremist Republican Party. He has long seen the need for compromise and for conscientious voting. I bet he has tossed and turned through many a sleepless night trying to figure out how to conform to leadership without sacrificing his conscience. Mike in Maine might be right; Alexander may be stepping down in part because he sees back home the voters don't like the extreme, uncompromising positions the Republican Party takes and the terrorist tactics it uses. Alexander may be seeing the ominous handwriting on the wall that will spell doom for extremist Republicans. All Republicans should read the handwriting on the wall and take heed.